Looking backwards and forwards

Well, I am back from my holiday break today. I am still getting over the Illness of Doom 2008/2009, but I am ready to be back at work….it’s a hell of a lot better than being sick and on vacation!

So, today I want to share with you some of my Christmas loot from Mr. Indie Fixx, share my holiday decorations (better late than never) & my resolutions for the upcoming year.

I opened some very nice indie goodies on Christmas morning from Mr. Indie Fixx. He used both Indie Fixx and the Indie Fixx Galleria to shop…what a good boy he is. This is what I got—a necklace from Lemon Grove, a print from Creative Thursday, prints and other goodies from Paper Sparrow & a notebook and wallpaper swatches from Freshly Blended. He also gave me another necklace from unnamed shop, which I had asked for, but neither of us were very happy with the quality, so I am sending it back.

In addition to buying Mr. Indie Fixx and all my other peeps presents, I had a lot of fun decorating the house this year for the holidays. I made snowflakes for all the windows. I just love making snowflakes, but I don’t really stick to traditional snowflake shapes. I much prefer to make more ‘abstract’ snowflakes.

I also made this garland from a template from Hello Handmade Paperie. Sorry the picture is a little bit blurry, but it spells out Happy New Year. I really was looking forward to a happy start to this new year. We had plans to get together with friends for New Year’s Eve and plans to go to Washington DC and the Philly Zoo over the break, but then I got sick and all that went out the window. I’m sure hoping 2009, the year, is better than it’s start.

So, that leads me to my New Year’s resolutions. I usually don’t ‘do’ resolutions, I sort of think it’s a contrived convention. This year, it made sense to me though. I had some time off and plenty of time in bed with nothing better to do than to make lists, plus I’ve been thinking about my goals and where I want to go both with Indie Fixx and the non-Indie Fixx part of life. Anyway, here’s what I came up with for resolutions for this year.

My resolutions

Spend more time with my family – I’ve become a workaholic over the past 3 years and the one area of my life that I feel has suffered the most are my family relationships.

Spend more time with myself – I need to read more, craft more, exercise more, try new things, follow through on some of those ideas I have, learn new stuff, etc. The things I enjoy doing and the things I should be doing to better myself and take care of myself too often fall by the wayside.

Cook more – I’ve recently gotten back into cooking. I used to do a lot more cooking, but fell into that all too convenient trap of pre-cooked convenience foods. I love cooking, but I started dreading the time it took, I know many of you know what I mean, but I honestly get so much joy from creating good food and feeding hungry people.

Eat better & exercise more – So cliche, I know, but oh so necessary.

Get outside my comfort zone more often.

Create more – Whether it’s with food, crafting, writing or whatever. I want to create for the sake of reawakening the spirit, not for any other reason.

Read more – I used to read at least 2-5 books a week & now I’m lucky if I get through 1 a month.

Make new friends and rekindle old friendships.

Clean my house and reduce the amount of shit I own.

Stop allowing myself to worry so much about what others think about me, my looks, my life, my choices.

That’s it for now. Later this week, I will be sharing some additions and changes that will occur here at Indie Fixx. Love ya!

Do you have the name of the book with stencils that you may have used for making the abstract snowflakes that you showed in this blog? I bought a book with stencils of some traditional looking and abstract looking ones, but none of them were as abstract and uncomplicated looking as yours.